VM /ETC

Archive for the ‘virtual appliance’ Category

VMware has recently announced the public availability of the VMware Studio 2.0 Beta, a tool to create virtual appliances and distribute them in OVF format, and today’s VMTN Roundtable Podcast provided a lot of discussion about the possible scenarios for using this new version. I’m still struggling to get my mind around the potential of Studio 2.0, but I did come away from today’s podcast with a few ideas that make me think I have either blurred the functions of several existing products or I have suddenly realized there may be some great “outside the box” use case scenarios for this new VMware software.

Before continuing, it is most clear that VMware Studio’s designed intent is for ISVs and developers to package their applications as preconfigured, ready to import virtual appliances. Now with version 2.0 even multi tiered applications can be wrapped up as a vApp in vSphere and exported as an OVF containing several VMs and then imported by any VMware virtualization host (free, hosted, or bare metal). If you are not already familiar with VMware Studio check out the Studio 2.0 Beta Overview web page for a complete listing of features, but the primary topic of interest (to me and the others on today’s podcast) seems to be centered around how enterprises can leverage VMware Studio, vApps, and OVF templates.

This is where the lines get blurry to me, and I’ll outline potential Studio / OVF usage that may be “outside of the box” from the VMware software’s intended purpose. Or is it? You tell me. Read the rest of this entry »

Cloud Computing in Plain English is a 4:51 long video from rPath that gives a great overview of Cloud Computing and how virtualization plays a  key role enabling all size businesses to take advantage of utility computing and software as a service (SaaS). The video is lite and humorous, and does a good job comparing traditional software to a luxury car, SaaS as a leased vehicle, and then Cloud Computing as a taxi.

Watch the video to hear how virtualization is the engine of the Cloud Computing taxi, and virtual appliances are the fuel for that engine.

I first heard about the video from Benard Golden’s CIO.com article titled after the video.

rPath is self described on their web site as

“the company that is pioneering the virtual appliance approach for application distribution and management.”

rPath also provides more information about their product offerings that help enable the Cloud Computing strategy.

“rBuilder and the rPath Lifecycle Management Platform automate the creation, configuration, management and maintenance of application images for virtualized and cloud computing environments. By producing application images that are optimized for any hypervisor, rPath frees the application from the underlying hardware, and enables a better model for development, deployment and support.”

Earlier this week at LinuxWorld in San Francisco Oracle announced 4 new template virtual machines for it’s own Oracle VM virtualization platform. This initial set of VM appliances includes:

• Oracle Enterprise Linux
• Oracle Database 11g
• Oracle Enterprise Manager
• Siebel CRM version 8

In a Betanews.com article titled Oracle boosts its own Linux with ‘templates’ to aid virtualization
the following additional information was reported:

‘These templates will save time and money for customers in deploying a full software stack by providing pre-configured images of enterprise software, said Monica Kumar, Oracle’s senior director of Linux and open source product marketing, in an interview with BetaNews.”

[omitted]

Oracle also plans additional VM templates, but the company hasn’t decided yet whether VM will use any OS other than Oracle Linux as the underlying virtualization platform, or whether templates will be offered for other OS, Kumar said. “Right now, we’re just focusing on Oracle Enterprise Linux,” BetaNews was told.”

I do find the existence of pre-installed, pre-configured and vendor certified virtual appliances / templates appealing as both Read the rest of this entry »

Download pre-built, complete Linux virtual machines for Sun xVM Virtualbox from veeDee-Eyes.com. More from the web site:

“About:
veeDee-Eyes.com was created to provide users with complete, functional Open Source Virtual Computers.
We download the distribution ISOs. Try and follow the installation instructions. We attempt to install the VirtualBox Guest Additions. VirtualBox VDIs that have the Guest Additions installed are noted on the VDI page.

Build Notes:
Unless noted in the “Build Notes” there are

• No additional packages added.
• No update performed.
• Only default options are used when ever possible

The goal is to create a CLEAN virtual computer. You get exactly what the creators of the “Operating System” designed in a STANDARD installation. From there you can make it your own.”

To use these VDI files you just need to do the following: Read the rest of this entry »

I posted a while back about VKernel’s Alex Bakman and his whitepaper on preventing performance bottlenecks on your ESX hosts. This time I am posting about another topic inspired by Alex dealing with how to chargeback for virtualization. More and more companies are beginning to talk about chargeback in virtual data centers, but many struggle with coming up with a formula for actually implementing such a model. VKernel has a great solution for this and provides for download both a free Excel calculator and a complete virtual appliance. I provide a little more information on both of these Vkernel solutions in the rest of this post.
Read the rest of this entry »

John Troyer from VMTN has hosted the first podcast episode of VMware Communities Roundtable and has posted a summary of the call notes at VMware Communities Roundtable podcast #1 | VMTN Blog. I am honored to have one of my “things that make you go hmmmm” (on the Quick Migration vs VMotion discussion) posts listed as a reference for one of the topics of the episode.

John announces the new series and the objective of the Roundtable podcasts with the following summary:

“Each week, we’ll bring together experts and leaders from the VMware Communities and virtualization blogs to discuss the interesting topics in virtualization. Think of this as if it were a group meeting up at VMworld over a pint to chat about the latest news.”

The episode lasts somewhere between 50 minutes to an hour and is a recorded call between John and an attendee list consisting of some of the virtualization community’s top minds from all over the world. VMware Community profiles of the individuals contributing to episode 1 are:

• Steve Beaver – sbeaver
• Tom Howarth
• Alex Mittell – mittell
• Eric Siebert – esiebert7625
• Edward Haletky -Texiwill
• Dave Mishchenko

Go to John’s VMTN post to listen or download the podcast, but the following is my quick summary and take-aways from the call. Read the rest of this entry »

Move over Lefthand Networks VSA, xtravirt.com has provided a free alternative for creating a virtual iSCSI SAN. Xtravirt Virtual SAN (XVS) is a virtual machine appliance that runs on two of your ESX hosts’ local VMFS datastores to create a single, synchronized iSCSI SAN. XVS allows the creation of ESX clusters for VI3 Enterprise features without purchasing a physical shared storage solution.

“The Xtravirt Virtual SAN (XVS) appliance for VMware ESX3 Server is a free solution to provide the benefits of shared VMFS storage without the cost of a SAN – this allows the utilisation of otherwise unused local storage in the ESX server to facilitate enterprise level features such as vMotion, DRS and HA normally only available through the use of a shared storage device. All volume data is synchronously replicated between hosts, providing full fail-over capability with data integrity in the event of host, disk or appliance failure.”

XVS is the perfectly priced storage solution for the home ESX test lab, small and mediium businesses, or the small remote branch office.

To download a copy of the virtual appliance and for more about XVS go to xtravirt.com.

updated 5.24.08

Currently XVS is only configurable as a single LUN across paired ESX hosts. A third ESX hosts can use the virtual ip address for it’s SAN, but the additional host(s) would not be using their local storage as part of the synchronized SAN. Future editions will hopefully expand the storage across more than 2 ESX hosts.